The Boxer

> Video: Jack Takes a Boxing Lesson

Uppercut Boxing Gym operates in a former sheet-metal fabrication shop in a part of Northeast Minneapolis that a fight-movie screenwriter would inevitably describe as “gritty.” The choice parking spots straddle unused railroad tracks that run tight against the front of the building. The brick facade faces Quincy Street, which, in this block just off NE Broadway, resembles a wide alley. On a hot summer day, the gym’s interior is visible from the street because a warehouse-style garage door is open to provide ventilation.

Owner Lisa Bauch talks as if the place were a Ritz-Carlton. By prevailing standards, it is. At 13,000 square feet, she says, Uppercut is the largest boxing gym in the Midwest. To the best of her knowledge, it is also the only such facility in the United States solely owned and operated by a woman.

Bauch isn’t just blinded by pride of ownership. Anthony “The Bullet” Bonsante, a professional fighter who trains here, talks to a visitor as if it’s self-evident that Uppercut is an exceptionally high-class joint—until realizing that his listener is unfamiliar with run-of-the-mill boxing gyms. He backs up to explain that most live down to the standards seen in the grittiest of gritty boxing movies: “Dingy. In basements. Like that.”

'Tony, you hit like a girl 'cause you're trained by a girl.' That was literally something that was said to Tony—after he beat the crap out of their fighter.

“This is beautiful,” Bonsante declares, gesturing at the high-ceilinged space. Never mind the warehouse structure or bare concrete floor. Notice instead the two full-size boxing rings. See the heavy bags, speed bags, and weight machinery positioned so that there’s plenty of room to work with all of it. Observe that the place is clean and light and airy. “This is by far the best facility around,” he adds. “I drive all the way from Shakopee to train here . . . . There are a lot of males [on the Midwest boxing scene] who wish they owned this gym.”

Bauch has run smaller gyms, beginning in 1996. She found this building through her sister, a commercial real estate agent, in 2003. At the time, Bauch was discouraged about her business and considering a new line of work. But she fell in love with the space on sight. “I walked through the door, and it was kind of a done deal,” she says. She opened her new location in February 2004.

Sean Clerkin, president of the Twin Cities-based Upper Midwest Golden Gloves Association—which Bauch serves as assistant director and secretary—admires not only her gym but her business model. He calls her “an asset to the sport” for her work with Golden Gloves—and also for the simple fact that she has made a go of it for more than 10 years as a gym owner.

Her facility is one of very few for-profit enterprises on the regional boxing scene, Clerkin says: “Most gyms for years have relied on nonprofit status and donations.” Those might come from neighborhood bars and small businesses or from other nonprofits, like the Shriners—not unlike the sponsorships that amateur softball teams solicit. “Lisa is showing the direction that people in the sport should look at,” he adds.

If so, Bauch is pointing the way for a group that didn’t exactly welcome her when she first developed an interest in boxing 14 years ago. She says she still runs into hostility today, just because she’s female. But if on one level she is a woman in an unusual occupation, on another she is a classic small-business owner, struggling with all of the challenges familiar to the breed.